What should I do for constipation?
Although including fresh food components and sources of dietary fibre such as fruits, vegetables, wholegrains and prunes can help to manage the symptoms of constipation, other tips such as drinking enough water, moving more and going to the loo as soon as you feel the urge are also important habits to encourage more regular toilet habits.
How can you manage constipation?
Here I outline my top tips for getting a sluggish bowel moving more regularly:
1. Drink more water
Water is so, so important for almost every single system of your body, but especially digestion. And I think in a lot of cases of constipation, water intake could be improved. So, when I say improved, it is helpful to try and track your water intake.
We're looking to consume between one and a half and two litres of water daily. What I do also say is to try and stick to a minimum intake of just that plain, still water. When we start to add other flavourings, sugars, sweeteners, caffeine, even if you're drinking lots of tea and coffee, those can risk actually disturbing your digestion for a number of reasons, in terms of the gut bacteria, igniting your stress response, and so on.
So, I'd say to try and stick to that minimum intake of water. And then over and above that you can have some warm drinks or other drinks that you would prefer. But usually, the more water you drink, the less room you have for other drinks so that water remains the priority.
2. Eat more fibre
Foods that are rich in dietary fibre should be a staple. So, this often includes your fruits, your vegetables, your whole grains, and then certain specific foods can get quite a lot of attention for constipation, which is great, such as prunes, and also prune juice. Again, these are really high fibre options. Biotta prune juice is a lovely organic option.
Another tip is to warm up options like the prune juice, and also your food in general, try and keep it nice and warm. Warm foods are generally a bit more helpful on your digestion, they're gentler. Your body doesn't need to use any extra energy to warm it up and your digestion can focus on what it needs to do. So, that can be just another nice tip.
Also, we get fibre supplements. So, there are different types of fibre including your soluble and your insoluble fibre. So, there are different supplement options out there. What I would say is a little bit of a fibre supplement is okay, but don't go overboard. And you absolutely need to have your water intake sufficient if you're going to benefit from fibre at all, especially soluble fibre. Soluble fibre absorbs water and if there's not enough water there, it will just potentially slow things down further, so we definitely don't want that. So, water is a must, whether you're getting your fibre from your diet or supplementing a little bit as well.
3. Introduce bitter foods
Another food group that's really important to consider when we're talking about supporting your digestion is bitter foods. So that includes a lot of your green leafy vegetables, your artichoke, your watercress, your rocket, options like that, that taste very bitter.
Then if you're looking to go a step up, or you feel your digestion just needs a little bit of extra support, you can get your herbal bitter remedies such as Yarrow (Complex). And you can just take this at the start of meals, five minutes to ten minutes before meals in a small splash of water. And that tastes very bitter in your mouth. Nowadays, in Western societies, we've lost a lot of the bitter elements of our diet. We have too many sweet and sugary elements, but it's this bitterness that your digestion really responds to, even as early as having that exposure to bitterness in the mouth, your stomach kind of wakes up and starts to gently stimulate all your gastric secretions. So, all that lovely stomach acid that we want to remain very strong.
Also, when we talk about water, we actually don't want to drink too much liquid alongside our meals. The reason being, this can risk diluting that lovely strong stomach acid. Stomach acid is so important for helping to break down our food properly and helping to support the balance of bacteria throughout the digestive tract. And both of these factors are really important for managing constipation and helping your food waste to continue moving efficiently through the gut.
4. Move more
Moving on from foods, I'm just going to touch on exercise. I never like to go into too much detail in terms of specifics around exercise. It's not so much my area of expertise, but actually, for me, I don't often believe that going to extremes or getting too overly obsessed with exercise is helpful.
We need to kind of think about the balance in terms of the stress response, and everything else; the toll it might be having on your body.
So, definitely moving more is often beneficial for constipation. The reason being; as we move our circulation's improving, our muscles are gently relaxing and contracting and this all encourages gentle movement throughout your digestive tract. So, muscles line your digestive tract and move in a special way, and this is called peristalsis. And this helps to move food waste through your gut. So, the more you're moving, the more that movement can gently massage your gut to action.
Also, exercise is going to support your metabolism. So, the more we move, the more our metabolism is supported. So, you've also got thyroid considerations there as well; that's all linked to metabolism. So, an underactive thyroid, for one, can often give rise to symptoms of constipation, because everything just kind of slows down, including your digestive function. We would want to consider whether or not you are on medication already. Supporting your thyroid to the best of your ability can be really important for managing constipation as well. So, that's one to consider as we get older, as our metabolism starts to slow down as well.
5. Go to the loo as soon as you need
Another little practical tip for me is to go to the toilet when you need to. It sounds silly, you might assume, 'Of course, you do'. But especially at this point in time, more people are starting to go back to work, more social events, things like that. If you're holding back from going to the toilet, routinely, that could potentially scupper your digestive functions and you could lose some of the ability, some of those urges to go to the toilet.
Sleep is the obvious area that works well in cycles. But in terms of how you eat, your meal timing, your digestion, everything in our body tends to work in a circadian rhythm. So quite often, we find we need to go to the toilet first thing in the morning, for example. So, if we start to purposely influence that routine and throw it off, then potentially, we could throw it all out of alignment. And that's when you might find that you realise you're not going to the toilet every day or when you used to, so just something to consider.
Also in line with all that is the stress element as well. So, whether you're stressed about going to the toilet or something else, it's just to keep in mind that stress does dampen down our digestion, it does have a negative effect on your digestion. So, stress can also have an influence on digestive symptoms such as constipation.
When I talked about the lovely strong stomach acid that we want to maintain, stress does have quite a direct effect on decreasing your stomach acid levels. So again, that's just something to consider as part of the overall picture, the kind of holistic approach, considering what different steps you could take potentially as a whole to alleviate your symptoms. Because again, every little helps; just putting in these small simple changes could potentially make a big difference.
6. Know how to select and use the right remedy
Where should you start with constipation-specific remedies?
Whether or not it's a more natural remedy or a more conventional medication, for most remedies for constipation, we do recommend short-term use. If it's any medications, go to your doctor for specific advice.
These can often be useful short term, but longer-term, we would want you to try and employ more of the diet and lifestyle tactics that I've spoken about throughout this blog.
Any other questions, please feel free to ask and get in touch either through the YouTube comments on the video above, or on our own website here at A. Vogel.
